


djohariah

by whatitis



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Somewhat, The Desert Otherworld, Year Three
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 19:17:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8590453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatitis/pseuds/whatitis
Summary: The desert is harsh and unforgiving, particularly for someone who is harsh and unforgiving towards himself.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hi, welcome to the culmination of my FEELINGS about carlos "dad jokes" the scientist
> 
> cw for emotional abuse, i reckon, but not anything more than what's shown in 70A, basically. fuck kevin. that's all

At first, when he saw the figure on the high hills of sand, it seemed like a mirage. Scientifically speaking, it was unlikely that anyone else could survive out here for as long as he had, with the days so harsh in their brightness and heat as the nights were freezing. There was nobody else out here, as far as he knew, save for the army of masked warriors that he occasionally spotted in the distance, but the person he saw was far from a giant--if they indeed existed at all. This fact was less truth and more doubt. Carlos himself was less truth and more doubt these days, in the unforgiving otherworld where he hadn’t had a face-to-face conversation in days (weeks? months?) and time truly escaped him.

 

The figure stopped, waved, and set a course for Carlos, and he slowly started to deduce that this was not a mirage. Even as the sun beat down with an almost physical tempo, the stranger certainly seemed real, their feet leaving real imprints in the sand and real sounds in Carlos’ ears, a quiet but persistent _shff-shff-shff_ breaking the eerie silence of the desert otherworld. It didn’t feel natural, but it felt real, exemplifying the non-mutually exclusive nature of reality. Unnatural things were brought into the real world all the time, and this simply seemed like another instance of that. For example, rain would be an unnatural thing in this desert, where it had not rained in what seemed like months, possibly years. That did not make the existence of rain in the universe any less real.

 

As whoever it was drew closer, Carlos began to pick out bits and pieces of identity. Neither tall nor short, neither thin nor fat. _Bright_ yellow shirt that made him squint, even in the light of day. No shoes--shouldn’t that hurt? There was an odd, jerky lilt to their walk, like a limp, but far more deliberate and insidious. For the briefest moment, they paused, staring back out at Carlos, and he could have sworn on a hundred bibles that they made eye contact from over thirty feet away. It chilled him to his absolute core, even in the oppressive desert heat, and it forced him to keep walking forward despite all of the common sense telling him to stay away from this person, this _thing_ with blistered feet and a loping gait reminiscent of an animal.

 

As they both drew near to each other, a few more things about the stranger became apparent: his hair was matted and tangled by sand and something sticky, and it hung over his face like a filthy shroud. One of his feet was twisted at an awkward angle--that would explain the limp, it seemed to be sprained. The most disturbing detail, however, was the copious amount of _something_ staining his shirtfront, dried brown and red in asymmetrical blotches, almost deliberate in their seemingly random positioning: left kidney, right collarbone, sternum, right shoulder…

 

_Shff-shff-shff,_ the sand said, filling the silence of gruesome fascination and even more gruesome appearance as Carlos studied the figure in front of him with a scientist’s eye. For only the briefest of seconds, he thought...no, he could never be that lucky. This wasn’t Cecil at all, no, just someone with his face and body. It was a sweet thought, though, and he let it linger on his mind and tongue in equal measure, searching for the words to express so many questions and accusations and symbols of relief, before settling on the most pressing problem in his life at that specific moment.

 

“Is that barbecue sauce?”

 

Carlos helped his new acquaintance limp back to the ramshackle structure that existed as his home (how bitter a word, now, in this transient place, a contradiction within itself) and laboratory, easing him into a chair. In that short walk of perhaps half a mile, he learned two things: one, the man’s name was Kevin, and two, that was definitely _not_ barbecue sauce, much to Carlos’ dismay. Even just with these two meager pieces of information, he _was_ able to infer that this man worked for Strex at some point, and that he had stepped through one of the old oak doors, much like Carlos himself.

 

(Not that he was really sure how he himself got into the desert otherworld, as time and space generally twisted in his presence like so many fistfuls of snakes, and the exact nature of the old oak doors and their relation to the house that did not exist was wholly unknown to him and his team of scientists, so it was a bit difficult to really pinpoint the exact cause of his being in the otherworld, but he did feel confident that this man, this Kevin, stepped through a door.)

 

As gently as he could, Carlos eased Kevin into a chair made of carefully plucked cacti and stone, kneeling to examine the other man’s foot with careful precision and a healthy amount of concern. It was sprained, as he predicted, but not as badly as he’d thought--most worryingly, though, it seemed to have been left untreated for some time, at least a week. Carlos took in Kevin’s appearance: his hollow eyes, his stained clothing, his twisted ankle, and finally mustered up the courage to ask another pressing question.

 

“How did you hurt yourself? When was this?” he pressed, standing back up to his full height. Kevin simply smiled up at him, letting his injured foot rest back on the ground.

 

“Well, it’s a funny story, actually! I got into a bit of a spat a few weeks ago, and got pushed around some!” Kevin explained, waving his hands around to illustrate whatever point he was trying to make. “I got knocked through a doorway, and my foot caught on the frame.”

 

“That’s conducive to your injuries, yes.” Carlos pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off a building headache. “And to a hypothesis of mine.”

 

“Ooh, that’s very scientific. They told me you were scientific.”

 

“...Who told you that?”

 

“Oh, nobody important!” Kevin crooned, pushing himself to a standing position. His foot twisted at an unnatural angle, and Carlos felt bile rising in his throat. “Just a few friends of mine who know you veee-ry well, Carlos. And you’re just as charming as they all said!”

 

“Kevin, I think you should sit back down.” This wasn’t said out of a real genuine concern, but out of a lack of things to say. “You’ll hurt yourself more.”

 

The other man obliged, flashing Carlos a smile that made his stomach turn. It was all brittle, yellowed teeth and bloodied gums. He had teeth like an abandoned cemetery: ominous and a little crooked. Carlos smiled back, though it was less of a smile and more of an instinctive baring of the teeth, crouching back down to prod at Kevin’s foot.

 

“You were involved in the Night Vale incident, weren’t you?” he asked, gently easing the ankle into a more manageable position.

 

“Night Vale has quite a few incidents; you’ll have to be more specific.” This was preceded by a shuddery gasp that took Carlos off guard, forcing him to pause in wrapping the foot in medical gauze and collect himself. This man terrified him more than he could comfortably express, and so he settled for simple routine, mechanically continuing the conversation like nothing strange had happened, _was_ happening.

 

“The Strex coup.”

 

“Oh! Yes, I was there. Sorry about all of that, it was all just one big misunderstanding!” Kevin smiled, and Carlos did not smile back.

 

“Misunderstanding,” he echoed, raising an eyebrow. “Also, don’t put too much weight on that foot.”

 

“Yes, it ended up rather badly, didn’t it? I must apologize for everything that happened--even I got injured!” 

 

“Was it one of Tamika’s soldiers?” Carlos absently ran his fingers through his hair, sounding relatively unimpressed. This man was deranged, sure, but Carlos was too sympathetic for his own good, and so he didn’t immediately order the man from Strex to leave. And, underneath all the excuses, he was just plain _lonely,_ used to being the only person around for miles. He missed the real physical presence of someone else being near him, and it didn’t seem right to let that pass, especially when he wasn’t actively aggressing Carlos or anyone else, unlike...well, unlike certain masked soldiers that he wasn’t too keen on encountering in large numbers.

 

“No, it was...hm, I’ve already forgotten his name! He’s dear Cecil’s brother-in-law, if I remember the reports correctly.”

 

“...Steve.”

 

“Oh, that’s it! You have such a good memory!”

 

“Steven Eugene Carlsberg.”

 

“That’s the one!”

 

“You got into a fight with Steve.”

 

“Yep, no need to wear it out!”

 

“Kevin, if you don’t mind my bluntness, how in _hell_ did you get Steve Carlsberg mad?”

 

Kevin wasn’t the best company, but he _was_ company, and that was better than solitude. He was enough like Cecil that Carlos felt good to be around him, but not enough that he got unbearably homesick. It comforted him to see any silhouette against the stark blue of the midday sky, where he couldn’t make out the details of those ruined eyes and crooked teeth and Kevin was just another research assistant eager to help his boss in any way. This was a lie, but it was a comfortable one, and it fit his reality enough to where the smaller details became irrelevant.

 

“Car- _los,_ ” Kevin called, extending the second syllable in a singsong way, “I found something!” 

 

On this particular outing, they were doing pure scientific research: taking samples of rocks and sand to bring back to the lab to study. (The lab was only a proper scientific establishment in name: it was more or less a mud structure with a few cacti inside to serve as decoration.) Carlos hoped this would tell him more about the nature of the place he found himself in, and perhaps even a little bit of information regarding how he could safely leave without triggering a reappearance of the old oak doors. So many variables tossed in his mind like a handful of dice, rattling his skull with incredible force.

 

“Carlos, c’mon!” Oh. That’s right. Kevin.

 

He jogged to catch up with his companion, shading his eyes against the sun to see whatever he had found. There, jutting out of the sand like some kind of unnatural cactus, was a small gardening shovel, pointing up to the sky in a gesture of holy rebellion. The metal on it was rusted and stained, perhaps by exposure to the otherworld, but the most unsettling thing about it was that it was present at all. As far as Carlos was aware, they were the only two humans out in the desert, and they only had the few tools Carlos had taken with him before the final old oak door closed. As he picked it up, he noted two letters clumsily etched into the handle: “N-T.”

 

“Do you know anyone with those initials?” Kevin asked, peering over his shoulder at the tool.

 

“...Uh, give me a sec to think about it--”

 

“I knew a Naomi Thomas, once.”

 

“Kevin--”

 

“She worked in sales, but I’m not sure what Naomi would be doing out here, since she had a lot of her organs--”

 

“ _Kevin._ ” Carlos grit his teeth, shutting his eyes. “Let me think, please.”

 

“Well, there’s no need to snap, Carlos!” Through Kevin’s smile, there was something lurking--behind the yellowed teeth, like a snake of a tongue threatening to strike.

 

“...You’re right, um, sorry--oh my god.”

 

“ _Smiling_ god,” Kevin corrected, perfectly genial.

 

“Nick Teller.” Carlos rubbed his temples, trying to grab on to the slightest thought that made sense. “He teaches, um, metalworking? And woodworking, and curseworking. At the high school back in town, I mean--I subbed in for one of his classes when he got sent to reeducation again. This is his.” Carlos tapped the shovel against his thigh to dislodge some loose dust, resulting in the entire working end of the shovel falling off and back into the sand. 

 

“Whoopsy-daisy!” Kevin said, leaning over to pick it back up.

 

“You’ve gotta see the mountain here, Cecil. It’s unbelievable!”

 

“As in, I don’t believe in it? True.”

 

Carlos leaned against a rock, phone held to his ear. His eyes, however, were focused on the setting sun’s light shining on the mountain, the blinking red light never deviating from its constant action, a small source of comforting stability in a universe where that was in short supply. Kevin had gone off somewhere on his own, probably to do things Carlos preferred not to think about that typically resulted in dinner. It was dinnertime, which was one of the few times that was real in the desert otherworld, along with party time and something called Kevin Time, which entailed scooping sand into one’s hands and spreading it to the wind.

 

Before dinnertime, however, it was Cecil Time, which entailed Carlos calling his boyfriend and talking for as long as he felt up to. This particular call had already lasted for about fifteen minutes, and Carlos would be worried about running down his battery, if his battery was able to run down in the strange physics of the otherworld.

 

“Oh, you goofball. They’re real.”

 

“You’re entitled to that opinion. Have you talked to the people of the masked army since they came back into your universe?”

 

“No, but I’ve been definitely meaning to. I just have to wait for them to wander back over to where I am, ‘cause it’s kind of hard to know where they are because of the whole nomadic tribe thing.”

 

“Makes sense.”

 

“Right? Oh, before I forget, I need to ask you something--”

 

“Do you look good? Always.”

 

“Aww, babe--really, though. How’s Nick Teller doing? You know, the AP Shop teacher?”

 

“Last I heard, he was getting reeducated for spreading forbidden truths. Why, do you need to call him? You know they don’t have good service in the abandoned mineshaft.”

 

“No, I just...alright. Thanks, sweetie. Can you make sure he gets a ride home? Usually I drive him, but…” Carlos trailed off, letting the silence indicate the dimension’s difference that existed between himself and all of his friends.

 

“...Right, yeah. Of course. I’ll get an intern to do it.”

 

“Who’s your current?”

 

“Carrie.”

 

“What happened to Maureen?”

 

“Oh, I have her out on assignment. She’s staking out the Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex. Teddy Williams has threatened to release a plague of frogs again, and we have to be at the top of the news, obviously.”

 

“You’re so good at your job.”

 

“You too, darling. Ooh--it’s almost my slot, gotta go. I love you,” Cecil said.

 

“Love you too,” Carlos said.

 

“Call ended,” his phone said, in white block letters across the screen.

 

_Shff-shff-shff,_ the sand said, and Carlos’ blood went cold. Slowly, deliberately, he turned, forcing a smile that was closer to a grimace.

 

“Were you eavesdropping, Kevin?” The man in question simply smiled, raising his hands in a placating gesture. The blinking light up on the mountain reflected off of his empty eye sockets, glinting on something deep inside his skull. Carlos felt bile rise in his throat.

 

“No, of course not! I wouldn’t violate your privacy like that, Carlos,” Kevin said, authentic concern washing over his face. “Do you really think I would?”

 

_Yes,_ Carlos wanted to say, _I don’t trust you._ But then that would make him rude, and make Kevin upset, which was just as bad as Kevin listening in on his phone call. Carlos wasn’t sure if Kevin was listening in, anyways--he could’ve just walked up as he hung up. It was unbecoming of him to assume that Kevin meant ill will just by existing. Then again, didn’t he? He was a Strex employee, why should he trust him? _Because he’s nice,_ Carlos thought firmly. _Being with him makes me happy._ This was a lie, but he didn’t realize it yet.

 

“No, you’re right. I’m sorry. Did you need something?” he asked, feeling a frustrated flush rise to his face. “Sorry, I took awhile on the phone, I just--”

 

“You wanted to talk to your boyfriend. That’s...understandable!” The blinking light of Kevin’s eyes flickered as he himself blinked, briefly transforming him into someone that seemed halfway normal. “I just wanted to tell you that I cooked some desert rat for dinnertime!”

 

“Did you remove the poison disc?”

 

“Of course.”

 

Carlos sighed, letting his eyes slip closed, the darkening dusk covering him like a shroud in the shadow of the rock. 

 

“Just give me a minute, Kevin.”

 

Time stretched like fine rubber inside the lighthouse on the mountain. If Carlos had to describe it simply, it was rather like a marble traveling a wide, shallow bowl: a spiral that closed in upon itself, accelerating as it reached a center point. As one neared the center of the lighthouse, minutes sped into seconds sped into no time at all, but as one neared the walls, everything lasted forever--or, rather, his limited perception of everything lasted his limited perception of forever. It was a good place to think about nothing at all, especially for a man who had too much on his mind at all times. That was a criticism he received frequently: _thinks too much._ It’s not like he wanted to constantly think. 

 

The lighthouse, while easily shaping up as the biggest mystery in his life, offered a place to leave it all behind.

 

His favorite activity--besides science, naturally--was to imitate that hypothetical marble in that hypothetical bowl, following the wall and the pictures on it before slowly careening towards the center, arms outstretched at his sides like a child’s impression of an airplane landing. And it was childish, he knew that much, and it kept him from falling, and it didn’t so much feel like an airplane landing as it did a vulture circling. Kevin refused to climb the mountain to the lighthouse, and Carlos missed company, but it also felt good to have something in this otherworld away from the man with the yellow shirt and the rotting tombstone teeth.

 

(He had come here with the army, once, and they had led him past the pictures on the walls, the pictures of everyone he knew and everyone he didn’t, the pictures of an everything so incomprehensibly infinite that it kindly reduced itself to the scope of the world that Carlos understood: the pictures of Cecil, the pictures of Mayor Cardinal, the pictures of the angels and Josie and the world they watched, the pictures of his Night Vale. He had cried, and Alicia had handed him a singular tissue.)

 

He could stay in the lighthouse for hours...or whatever hours meant to the rest of the world. Days, maybe. He could devote his entire mind to this room with its glimpses into a world he chose to isolate himself from for longer than his attention usually lasted. He watched, sometimes, but he mostly spun in that vulture way, feeling and seeing and hearing time spin around as he did. It meant leaving things behind, but so did every action he took. His conscience could handle small sacrifices for moments of peace like this, in the chamber of the lighthouse’s living heart.

 

It felt bad to acknowledge, but Kevin was easier to talk to in the dark.

 

Or, rather, the “dark”, because the stars shone so bright that the word lost half its weight. The night was enough, though, to where the ruination of Kevin’s face could be easily ignored, leaving just the smooth, pleasant voice (a voice for radio, truly) and the _shff-shff-shff_ of the sand. There was a rock just out past the laboratory that sat high above the sand, leaving a nearly-perfect view of the sky above. It was good for Carlos’ purposes, and that’s all that it needed for him to bestow the rating of nearly-perfect to it.

 

“Kev, do you--”

 

“It’s Kevin.”

 

“...Kevin, do you really think I can get to all the stars before Cecil comes?”

 

Carlos sat on the rock cross-legged, with a long roll of paper spread out in front of him, marked with hundreds of minute specks. They were hard to see in the “dark”, but he knew the drawing intimately enough to where he didn’t need to see it. The sky was laid out before him in its brightness, and the paper was just a reflection of that--metaphorically speaking. Scientifically speaking, it wasn’t a reflection, just a direct copy of all the stars he could fit without absolutely losing his mind or his pencil. Kevin sat next to him, his feet dangling off the edge of the rock.

 

_Shff-shff-shff,_ the sand said.

 

“I don’t think so,” Kevin said.

 

That actually gave Carlos pause as he lifted his pencil from the paper, glancing over at Kevin in something like surprise. Kevin was candid, sure, as most radio hosts are, but that statement still confused him. It wasn’t like Kevin to be rude...if what he had just said even qualified as rude. Was it? Oh, it really wasn’t--Carlos had asked for a genuine opinion, and Kevin had delivered. Kevin was never rude. Callous, perhaps, but not rude. Carlos thanked God or angels or whoever kept him from instinctively voicing his initial opinion, because who knew how Kevin might have reacted?

 

“Why’s that?” Carlos asked, returning to the meticulous work that occupied him, his voice uncharacteristically quiet. Not out of any specific emotion, per se, just as a symptom of multitasking.

 

“There’s quite a few of them, is all! I don’t imagine you’ll be able to mark down _all_ of them in the next two weeks.” Kevin smiled. Carlos couldn’t see it in the “dark”, but he had come to know when Kevin was smiling.

 

“I guess you’re right.”

 

“You guess?”

 

“Sorry. You’re right, Kevin. But I think I might be able to do this! I’ve, um, made pretty good progress, and I’ve done all the research, and I’m really, really excited to get it done!” His attention slowly tipped over to Kevin--or, rather, his attention that was previously for the starmap shifted to Kevin as the conversation shifted to the stars, merging his two tasks into one. His excitement returned in full force--or, rather, as full a force as he had been able to muster in the preceding weeks, with his slightly-dampened spirit and amount of work. He liked talking about the stars--or, rather, he knew the stars wouldn’t be cruel to him.

 

“I think you could be a little more productive than you’re being, Carlos!” Kevin continued to smile. Carlos did not.

 

“The stars only come out at night, Kev, and I don’t want to sleep any less than I am right now. I think I’m going at a good pace, though.”

 

“Kevin.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“You can put a little more _emphasis_ into that, now, can’t you?”

 

“Sorry!”

 

Carlos continued to meticulously peck at the map, not looking over at the man next to him. Kevin may have been easier to talk to in the dark (the “dark”), but it was harder, as well: the lack of visual contact stripped Kevin down to what he really was: a voice, a _compelling_ voice, a voice that sounded like honey. Or, rather, not honey, but sap, the kind of sap that trapped insects inside of itself until it hardened into amber. Carlos had looked at those insects before in a laboratory, under a magnifying glass.

 

He had wondered how those insects had allowed themselves to get stuck.

 

“Carlos?”

 

“Yeah?” Quiet again, focused on the dots.

 

“Do you think the stars see us, too?”

 

It felt like everything had gone wrong in the span of a too-hot afternoon, but in retrospect, everything had been going wrong since he stepped through that old oak door over a year before, everything had been going wrong since he had seen the figure like a mirage on the sand hills, everything had been going wrong, wrong, wronger.

 

Carlos felt sick, nauseous, even, but he knew that it was unlikely for that to be the case. He wasn’t a squeamish man, never had been, and so he knew it had to be purely psychosomatic, which was a fairly confident thought to be having while standing in a pool of blood nearing a half-inch deep. The sand filtering in through the open doorway stung his eyes, but not enough to really give him enough reason to walk over and shut the door. His attention was fixated on the paper under his hands, and the wobbly penmanship marking it at his own. Cecil had always thought his handwriting was pretty.

 

_Shff-shff-shff,_ the sand said, a wordless plea against the blood slowly encroaching its way across the stone floor towards the outside.

 

“I know, I know,” Carlos said, emphatically signing his name close to the bottom of the clean page. Just _Carlos,_ not a surname, not even his usual following of the Scientist. The letter wasn’t written by Carlos the Scientist, professor, professional. There was no reason to make it seem like it was anything more than what it was: an apology from a friend to another friend--or, rather, a “friend”. The “dark” loses half its power in the face of the stars, and this “friend” lost half his power in the face of revelation. Revelation. Capital R, hallelujah.

 

He crisply folded the paper in on itself twice as the wind picked up outside the building, and the rain fell for the first time in years.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. i wrote this over a period of, like, six months, and it shows. sorry !
> 
> 2\. the title comes from the sufjan stevens song of the same name, it's suggested listening. (it's also seventeen minutes long, but the lyrics don't really start til 11:40. i very much recommend it and also sufjan's entire fuckin discography)
> 
> 3\. if anyone ever wants to cry about carlos: opens my arms wide
> 
> 4\. if anyone ever wants to yell about kevin: ME TOO.
> 
> 5\. why didn't anybody tell me that writing him feels so icky...? i feel like i need a shower


End file.
